Reviewed on Friday September 16
It’s rare that you go to a show and find yourself wishing the main support were the headliners, but that’s exactly what happened at the Bald Faced Stag on Friday. Support act Rick Dangerous And The Silkie Bantams outright stole the show playing a set packed full of comedic flavour and an extremely tight sound. The band delivered impressively high-energy rock songs about masturbation, thrusting and all manner of other impious topics, demonstrating nothing if not lyrical prowess.
While their music is composed of the most basic of melodies and isn’t especially pioneering, audiences get double the entertainment with this band. With lead singer Rick’s toilet humour and dad-like dancing, the band looked more like extras from The Office than anything else.
Indeed, there’s a kind of down-to-earth, dirty humour to the group, and while they’re not a novelty band, they certainly have the air of the troublemaker about them; they are unafraid of taking the piss out of both their audience and themselves.
They sashayed through a slew of entertaining songs, with set highlights including the pulsating ‘Bruja’ and the tantalising ‘Bully Wank’, both tunes generating a contagious energy throughout the packed room. Make no mistake: these boys are damn entertaining. Remember their name.
Love was well and truly alive when The Dead Love took to the stage: the audience emphatically sang, screamed and cheered for their grunge-punk vibes, songs presented amidst a haze of long hair and beautifully brittle vocals. You don’t even have to know the band to fall head-over-heels in love with the lull of their beat. New drummer Miles Cochrane absolutely killed it on songs from their impressive new album So Whatever, the album’s title track and ‘99’ proving standouts in the set.
Though Rick Dangerous had said his band were “riding on the coat-tails” of The Dead Love, in actuality, these bands were each soaring in their own right, turning out passionate, powerful sets.
